'Flabbergasted' stepmother Sian hits back at Blair wedding snub: As Euan celebrates idyllic ceremony, TV star tells of 'rudeness' at being disinvited (and asks: 'is it because I was against Iraq war?')

                                           Cherie Blair declared the bride the most beautiful she had ever seen. The groom, her son Euan, looked similarly ‘amazing’. And filled with ‘breathtaking’ flowers, the church in the quiet Buckinghamshire village of Wotton Underwood was a worthy backdrop.
In fact, the wedding of the Blairs’ first-born Euan was pretty near  perfect. Even the rain held off.
But one dark cloud hovered over the big day in the form of TV weathergirl Sian Lloyd, the stepmother of the bride, Suzanne Ashman.
‘She is puzzled at the reason behind such rudeness,’ a close friend told The Mail on Sunday yesterday. ‘She is flabbergasted at the “disinvite”.’
Friends said Miss Lloyd, 55, has made no secret of her staunch opposition to the war in Iraq and has been strongly critical of Mr Blair’s ‘warmongering words about Syria’.
This, she feels, might lie behind the snub, even if only in part.
While her comments were never delivered publicly, it is thought they may have reached the former Prime Minister’s ears.
There was some speculation that Miss Lloyd would attend the ceremony with husband Jonathan Ashman, regardless of being ‘uninvited’ – but she insisted that was never the case.
‘No, no reinvite has followed the disinvite,’ she told a friend in an email. ‘Original invite on table  here, with Sian & Jonathan writ large on envelope . . . but alas, alack & woe is me.’
In another message on Friday, she said: ‘Designer dress and posh high heels returned to wardrobe with a sigh . . . back to weather charts to try and deliver a sunny day for tomorrow’s newlyweds.’
After lunching with girlfriends yesterday – and raising ‘a glass of bubbly to the happy couple’ – Miss Lloyd was planning to ‘curl up on the sofa and watch a film’.
Some in Miss Lloyd’s circle say her fractious relationship with the first wife of her husband is probably a more credible explanation for  her exclusion.
‘Sian says it might be due to the ex-wife resenting how happy she is with Jonathan,’ said another source close to Miss Lloyd.
At first, Mr Ashman, a 64-year-old motor-racing entrepreneur, was so incensed at his wife’s treatment that he threatened to boycott the wedding. However, Miss Lloyd convinced him to change his mind and give his daughter away.
‘Sian said she was pleased she  persuaded him to attend as it was the right thing to do. She said Jonathan absolutely hated the idea of going without her,’ said a friend.
Yesterday at All Saints, Wotton Underwood, ten minutes’ walk from the Blairs’ mansion, all rancour  was forgotten.
As he watched his 25-year-old daughter, in an oyster cream dress, step from a chauffeur-driven black taxi, Mr Ashman announced: ‘I am very proud.’
And after praising the bride,  Cherie Blair said of her 29-year-old son, who wore a blue lounge suit with a white carnation: ‘Didn’t my boy look amazing!’ Earlier, at the church door, an emotional Mr Blair held his son’s face in his hands and kissed him on the cheek.
Mr Blair said later: ‘It is a very happy day. We are grateful to have such a wonderful daughter-in-law.’